How do I negotiate a raise in Switzerland?

The four figures Art. 322 CO puts side by side

The agreed salary is only the first of the four. The customary salary applies where nothing was agreed, which is rarely the situation inside a running employment relationship. The other two are the ones worth checking: a Normalarbeitsvertrag (standard employment contract issued by the Confederation or a canton) and a collective agreement can both fix a binding minimum for your role.

This is the reason the first question in preparing a pay conversation is not "what am I worth" but "which of the four does my current figure come from". If it comes from a collective agreement minimum and you are being paid less, there is nothing to negotiate — there is a shortfall. If it comes from what you and your employer agreed, then the number is a contract term, and a contract term changes only when both sides agree to change it.

A statistical median is a good argument and it is not one of the four. Salary statistics tell you what comparable work pays; they create no entitlement. Reading Art. 322 CO carefully is what stops a well-prepared case from being presented as if it were a legal one when it is not — a mistake Swiss line managers notice immediately.

Asking is not the same as asserting a claim

Art. 336 para. 1 lit. d CO protects the assertion of claims arising under the employment relationship, made in good faith. Art. 336a CO sets the consequence: compensation fixed by the court on the basis of all the circumstances, capped at six months of the employee’s salary. Art. 336b CO attaches two short deadlines to it — a written objection to the party giving notice, at the latest by the end of the notice period, and an action filed within 180 days of the end of the employment relationship, failing which the claim lapses.

None of this turns a pay conversation into litigation, and the point of quoting it here is narrower: the protection attaches to claims, not to requests. Wanting more money is neither protected nor prohibited. A refusal needs no reasons and says nothing that the law would read as a signal.

Separate answers on this site cover unlawful dismissal and the duty to give reasons for a termination. What belongs here is only the hinge: whether your figure rests on one of the four sources in Art. 322 CO decides which of the two conversations you are having.

The rulebook that does contain a pay rise — and the language it is missing

On 31 August 2026 we read five federal acts on Fedlex in the version in force and counted the vocabulary of a pay rise in each act’s own text. In the Code of Obligations, the Labour Act and the Gender Equality Act, the German words Lohnklasse, Lohnentwicklung, Lohnerhöhung, Teuerungsausgleich and Lohnanpassung do not occur at all. In the Federal Personnel Act only one of them occurs. In the Federal Personnel Ordinance all five occur, the most frequent of them sixty-seven times.

Now put that next to which of those five acts you can read in English. Fedlex publishes the Code of Obligations and the Gender Equality Act in an English realisation; the Labour Act, the Federal Personnel Act and the Federal Personnel Ordinance exist in German, French and Italian only. Romansh gets three of the five. English gets two.

So the one Swiss rulebook that actually spells out how a salary rises — with a curve, with percentages per year of experience, with an annual proposal to the line manager — is not available in the language most arriving professionals read. That is worth knowing before assuming that Swiss pay progression is undocumented. It is documented; it is simply documented somewhere most English-language guidance never looks.

Fedlex carries a standing note on its English texts: English is not an official language of the Swiss Confederation, the translation is provided for information purposes only and has no legal force. The German, French and Italian versions are the ones that bind.

What the federal salary curve actually says

Art. 15 of the Federal Personnel Act states the three criteria that set pay in the federal administration: function, experience and performance. Art. 39 of the Federal Personnel Ordinance, in the version in force since 1 January 2026, turns that into arithmetic. The salary development curve starts, with no creditable years of experience, at 110 per cent of the minimum amount of the salary class. It then rises by 2.75 per cent of that class minimum for each of experience years one to five, by 2.25 per cent for years six to ten, by 1.75 per cent for years eleven to fifteen and by 1.25 per cent for years sixteen to twenty.

The list stops there. Beyond twenty creditable years of experience the curve provides no further step. Two neighbouring provisions complete the picture: para. 2 gives every line manager an annually calculated proposal for each employee’s salary development, and para. 6 obliges the employer to explain to employees the basis on which their salary and its development are calculated. Art. 40 allows an extraordinary adjustment where a salary is too low measured against other salaries, in one or more steps, capped at ten per cent of the maximum of the salary class.

Art. 16 of the same ordinance sets the assessment criteria — fulfilment of the requirements in the job description and attainment of any agreed objectives — requires written reasons where the requirements are exceeded or not met, and prohibits extraneous criteria such as sex, age, language, position, nationality or religion. Art. 16 of the Federal Personnel Act adds an appropriate cost-of-living adjustment, with the employer taking account of its economic and financial situation and of labour market conditions.

For a private employment relationship, none of these four has a statutory counterpart. That absence is the single biggest difference between how pay works here and how it works in an American or British company with a published banding structure and a compulsory annual cycle. In Switzerland the annual cycle, where it exists, is company practice — real, but not a right.

If your employer has 100 or more employees, a document about pay exists

Art. 3 of the Gender Equality Act lists pay expressly among the areas covered by the ban on sex discrimination. Since the revision in force from 1 July 2020, that ban is backed by a procedure. Art. 13a obliges employers with 100 or more employees at the start of a year to carry out an internal equal pay analysis for that year, with apprentices not counted; the analysis is repeated every four years, and an employer whose analysis shows equal pay is met is released from repeating it.

Art. 13c requires a scientific and legally compliant method and records that the Confederation provides all employers with a free standard analysis tool; the Federal Office for Gender Equality calls it Logib. Art. 13d requires employers subject to the Code of Obligations to have the analysis audited by an independent body — an approved audit firm, an organisation under Art. 7, or an employee representation.

Then comes the provision that matters most in a pay conversation. Art. 13g: employers shall inform employees in writing of the result of the equal pay analysis within one year of the conclusion of the audit. The Federal Office for Gender Equality states on its own page that this communication had to take place by 30 June 2023. Art. 13h requires listed companies to publish the result in the notes to the annual accounts, and Art. 13i requires public-sector employers to publish the individual results of both the analysis and the audit.

Two limits belong with this. First, an equal pay analysis is a statistical statement about a pay structure, not a statement about your individual salary — it cannot tell you what you should earn. Second, Arts. 13a to 13i are time-limited: the Fedlex footnote records that they are in force from 1 July 2020 until 30 June 2032.

What has to be in writing once you agree

Art. 330b para. 1 CO lists five particulars an employer must give in writing where the employment relationship is open-ended or lasts longer than a month, and "the salary and any additional benefits" is one of them. Para. 2 covers what happens afterwards: where those contractual elements change during the employment relationship, the employee must be informed of the changes in writing within one month of their entry into force.

An agreed pay rise therefore leaves a document behind as a matter of law. The conversation is not the end of the process; the written notification is, and it has a deadline. What Art. 330b para. 1 means at hiring is answered separately on this site.

One clarification that spares a common misunderstanding: the written form is a duty of information, not a condition of validity. A salary agreement is not void because the employer failed to confirm it in writing. The notification is still owed.

What you cannot trade away

Pay conversations sometimes end in a package: a higher base in exchange for a different arrangement on overtime, on Ferien (holiday) or on an allowance. Art. 341 para. 1 CO limits how far that can go. For the period of the employment relationship and for one month after its end, the employee may not waive claims arising from mandatory provisions of law or from the mandatory provisions of a collective employment contract.

Which provisions are mandatory is not a matter of impression: Arts. 361 and 362 CO list them, and for a collective agreement the agreement itself does. A waiver of such a claim does not become valid because it formed part of a bargain that was favourable overall.

This is the reason a package is worth having read before it is signed — not because packages are unfair, but because part of one may not legally have been on the table.

For readers who have negotiated pay elsewhere

Three imported assumptions cause most of the friction. The first is that an annual review is owed: in a Swiss private-sector job it is a company practice, and the only place the annual rhythm is a legal duty is the federal personnel ordinance quoted above. The second is that inflation adjustment is automatic: it is not, and the German word for it appears in no act here except the two governing federal staff. The third is that a band or a grade exists in the background: in most Swiss private employers there is no published banding, which is precisely why the equal pay analysis is the only structural document many employees will ever see.

The vocabulary is worth getting right, because it signals whether you are negotiating in the local system or in an imported one. It is Lohn, not the German Gehalt; Ferien, not Urlaub; the workload is a Pensum stated in per cent rather than in hours per week; and the 13. Monatslohn (thirteenth month salary) is a separate figure with its own legal basis, answered separately on this site. Talking about your "package" without stating the Pensum is the most common way an otherwise well-prepared case becomes hard to compare.

One last structural point for anyone employed by a canton, a commune, a cantonal hospital or a school: Art. 342 para. 1 lit. a CO expressly reserves federal, cantonal and communal public-service rules. Your salary is then governed by cantonal personnel law, which differs from canton to canton, and the federal curve above is an illustration of the pattern rather than a statement about your employer.

Where this answer stops

This page explains what the cited acts say. It deliberately does not tell you which figure to name or how to run the conversation, because there is statutory text for the first and none for the second.

For an individual case — whether a collective agreement covers your role, whether an allowance is mandatory, whether a dismissal that followed a pay conversation was unlawful — the route is a legal advice service, a trade union, a legal expenses insurer or the cantonal conciliation authority for employment matters. Those bodies can see your contract. This page cannot.